History
At the time of the Battle of Crete (Operation Mercury), German Fallschirmjäger were equipped with the same assortment of small arms as the Heer, carrying only pistols and hand grenades on them during airborne jumps, with submachine guns, rifles and crew-served weapons stored separately in containers that were dropped from the wing of the exit craft. The German parachute harness, with a single strap attached to the body making the paratrooper land on his hands and knees in a forward roll, did not allow for heavier equipment such as rifles and machine guns to be safely carried during jumps. At Crete, long-range rifle and machine gun fire from dug-in Commonwealth defenders (largely New Zealanders from 5 Brigade's 22nd Battalion) inflicted heavy casualties upon the outgunned German paratroopers in the early stages of battle as they attempted to retrieve their support weapons from containers scattered all over the battlefield. These early combat experiences demonstrated that standard weapons were not ideal for airborne operations.
Read more about this topic: FG 42
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“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
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—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)